Hunt named AP North and South Dakota news editor

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. 
Amber Hunt, an award-winning police and public safety reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has been named North Dakota and South Dakota news editor for The Associated Press.

The appointment was announced Monday by David Scott, the AP's regional editor for the Central U.S., and Tena Haraldson, the AP's chief of bureau for the Dakotas and Nebraska.

"The story of the Dakotas is endlessly fascinating for a curious journalist such as Amber," Scott said. "North Dakota is the rare place in our nation with an economy that's booming and a shortage of workers to fill plentiful jobs. South Dakota has come through a summer filled with breaking news. It's a place that deserves a sharp leader who is excited about the story of the two states, and we're thrilled that Amber is that editor."

Hunt recently completed a yearlong Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she focused on visual storytelling. From her base in Sioux Falls, she will oversee the cooperative's news report in all formats, working with AP reporters in Sioux Falls, Pierre, Bismarck, N.D., and Fargo, N.D.

"We welcome Amber's enthusiasm for a good story, along with her background in online and visual storytelling," Haraldson said. "She's a reporter at heart, and I look forward to having her input on news coverage in the Dakotas."

Hunt, 32, spent more than seven years at the Free Press, covering crime and public safety in Detroit and the surrounding area. Her dispatches from the city streets were packed with rich reporting from police, the accused and victims. She won awards for stories on unsolved homicides and the interstate drug trade.

Hunt also contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted of lying in a civil lawsuit and faces federal corruption charges. She received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2010 to create a multimedia approach to mapping and analyzing crime in Detroit.

Hunt, who grew up in Georgia and Iowa and graduated from Wayne State University, began her career as an associate arts and entertainment editor at The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She also worked as a reporter and assistant city editor at The Times Herald in Port Huron, Mich.